Friday just gone saw me at Heide Museum of Modern Art. The show I saw was, entitled, Perfect for every occasion: photography today.
Without getting into specifics, I am more than stoked to have seen such a lively and healthy showing of the state of current contemporary photographic art practice here in Australia.
My main favourites were:-
- Patrick Pound's prints from mobile phone images.
- Debra Phillip's beautiful and considered photographic installation
- Paul Knight's large and very European feeling colour images.
At first when I saw the beautiful giclée prints by Patrick Pound, I didn't believe that they were images that hadn't gone though some post processing, until I got home. I was able to mimic the Henson-esque like softness of the images by simply focussing up close on an image, as he had indeed done, and with some simple moves in photoshop hey presto, all I would need is the cash to print them as giclée prints.
Debra Phillip's were seemed to me to really honour the traditions I've come to love in Photography, but not in a fawning or servile way. Everything from the framing down to the sequencing really worked well, it was a cohesive and resolved body of work.
Paul Knight's work which are large scale prints of slightly ambiguous subject matter reminded me of an amalgam 2 European Photographer's work, Boris Mikhailov, and Thomas Struth.
There was a noticeable number of New Zealanders represented, and of course some work that for me just clutched at straws or were simply post-modernist ideas, the usual one trick pony type stuff.
Overall, I really enjoyed the way several people were approaching the use of image capturing devices and how they responded to the idea of output, I would have liked to have seen some mention however of images being used in an online context. Overall the show was witty endearing challenging beautiful and engaging.
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